


Soooooo.....

by zephsomething



Series: Surviving the War [32]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 20:48:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20823572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephsomething/pseuds/zephsomething
Summary: Harry and Hermione talk after the wedding, and then they do something a little bit crazy





	Soooooo.....

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to my sister for editing these. Sorry I'm taking so long to post them, I just genuinely keep getting busy and forgetting.

The wedding had wound down and most of the guests had long since drifted away. Harry had tried to help with cleanup but had been shooed away by Molly, who had also refused to let Ron, Ginny, or Hermione help. Ron and Ginny had been pulled away by a group of late leaving cousins when Hermione leaned on the table and gave Harry the most serious look he’d seen on her face all night.

“So Harry,” he raised an eyebrow as she drummed her finger tips on the table. She’d elongated ‘so’ until it seemed to have developed several extra syllables. “Have you given any thought as to what you’ll do with Grimmauld place? Now that it’s safe enough to use again?”

“Huh, I’d forgotten about it actually.” He’d gone several times after the battle of hogwarts, to check on Kreacher and to gather evidence and catch any of Voldemort’s death eaters who might have been hiding there. Then he’d told Kreacher to look after it and hadn’t been back since. Kreacher always came to him if he needed anything.

“Well I’ve been thinking.” She reached into a familiar little bag and pulled out a binder full of paper, such a muggle sight Harry blinked a moment before nodding. “What if we turned it into a school? You know until I can convince the ministry that Hogwarts should teach all students.”

“You mean for squibs?” Harry raised an eyebrow.

“And young werewolves, half-giants, or half anything really.” Hermione was nodding and flicking through her binder. “I mean it’s perfect, it’s already unplottable, and no one can get to it without personally being invited by you.”

“I mean I suppose but-” He cut himself off and gestured to the binder. “You’ve already thought of everything I might say haven’t you?”

“I’m not quite that good but yes.” She flipped to a page titled ‘Reasons Against The School-Harry’ that had a full page of print so small Harry couldn’t read anything after the title. “Obviously you work at hogwarts so you can’t teach both but I can get teachers and-”

“A summer home.” Harry interrupted her as the thought occurred to him and Hermione raised an eyebrow. “Well me and Riddle can’t have been the only kids who had homes they didn’t want to go back to in the summer. It could be a summer home as well, a school during the year and then a summer home during the summer. For any kids, from any school near here, who have reason not to go home can stay there.”

“Harry that’s brilliant!” Hermione’s eyes had lit up as he started talking and her fingers were twitching like she wanted a quill in her hand. “It won’t be able to start this year of course but I can get started on all the paperwork we’ll have to do with the ministry and running it shouldn’t be a problem at all, I can do part and you can do a bit and we’ll find a capable headmaster. Oh this is working out brilliantly.”

Harry grinned back at her as Ron and Ginny came back over, both of them raising eyebrows but it was Ron who spoke. “What’s working out?”

“Harry and I are going to start a school!” Hermione gestured at the binder with a grin at both of them. “For kids who aren’t currently allowed into Hogwarts, just until I can get that changed of course but for now it’s a good start at least.”

“Harry love aren’t you teaching at Hogwarts?” Ginny turned her raised eyebrows on him and he shrugged. “Merlin help us all you’re going to try and do both.”

“And you’re going to work at the ministry still while you run this school?” Ron was looking at Hermione with pride and awe clear on his face. “I always said you were a nutter.”

“Hmm.” Hermione had procured a quill from somewhere and was adding notes into her binder but from the flush on her cheeks Harry could tell she’d heard Ron’s tone and seen his expression first.

It was still another week before Harry and Hermione were able to meet up in Grimmauld Place. It looked nearly as dark and gloomy as it had when Harry had first seen the place, with obvious marks now from it’s part in the war, and Sirius’ mum greeted them with her usual screams. Harry stood in the doorway for a solid thirty second before turning around and using his wand to slice straight through the wall around Ms Black’s frame.

“Kreacher!” He called out as the portrait fell forward and her screams changed tone from angry to something like scared.

“Master Potter!” Kreacher popped into place beside Harry and took one look around the scene with wide eyes. “What does master Potter think he’s doing with Mistress’ portrait?”

“Remember the room up top where we used to keep buckbeak?” Harry lifted up the chunk of wall with his wand and set it to the side. “You can clean that up and have it for your room if you’d like. I don’t care what happens to this portrait but I no longer want to hear her yelling slurs at my guests.”

Kreacher’s eyes went even wider, so much so he looked nearly like Dobby for a moment. Then he touched the portrait and both of them disappeared.

“Right, well, let’s get started.” Harry nodded once. The hole in the wall opened into one of the side rooms and Harry started tearing away the rest of the wall.

In the weeks between the wedding and the start of term Grimmauld place saw more people in and out since it had since Harry’s fifth year. Harry was there almost constantly, remodeling, scrubbing, and sorting everything. This time around Kreacher was a tremendous help, all his bits moved from behind the boiler up to the attic room as did a great many of the bits Harry wanted to remove from the other rooms.

It took some of Andromeda and Molly’s best scrubbing charms to remove the residue of whatever curses had hit the walls. The first time time Andromeda came to Grimmauld place with little Teddy clutching her hand and looking around with wide eyes Kreacher had bowed so low his nose had scraped the ground. He muttered for weeks after that about the last of the Black’s coming home. Andromeda got a twinkle in her eyes and her lips twitched every time she caught him at it.

Andromeda spent a solid week in the drawing room with the family tapestry prodding at its charms and trying to get it off the wall. In the end though it was Bill who managed to get it off. The thing got rolled up and Kreacher ferreted it off to his room. Bill’s curse breaking skills came in handy in several of the rooms where someone or another had left behind surprises.

Neville and Hannah came over, both separately and together to help turn the small back garden into a decently sized and stocked greenhouse. Their house elf followed them both muttering about growth and magicking the plants as she went.

The various house elf heads all came down and Kreacher looked so stricken that Harry helped him cart the whole lot up to the attic. It had started taking on a look like a shrine to the black family but Harry helped Kreacher mount the heads all around the room.

It was Hermione who had the idea of hiring other house elves, asking them what terms they wanted and writing up contracts with Harry. By the end of the summer they had not only Kreacher but also four other house elves, only one of whom would actually accept pay and none of whom would accept their own rooms. Hermione helped add a sleeping quarters off of the kitchen for the four of them to share however and that they seemed to accept as odd but nice.

Once the cleaning and most of the large-scale renovations were done Harry set about putting up dozens of extra lighting fixtures in. The best way to fight the gloomy feeling in the place was to fill it with light.

By the time they were done with the place it felt like a school. It was still nowhere near as impressive as Hogwarts of course but there’s only so much you can do with a townhouse. The top couple floors had been changed into dorms, the sprawl of lower floors were classrooms, and the kitchen had been cleaned and refurbished. Harry couldn’t decide if it was the renovations, the additional charms they’d added, or the extra lighting but somehow the whole place felt more welcoming and alive than it ever had before.

When Harry asked if she needed help with the tremendous task of staffing and funding the school Hermione brushed him aside and muttered something about needing a hobby anyway. Harry was suddenly vividly reminded of an eleven-year-old with gigantic hair and buck teeth dropping a book that had to have weighed almost as much as she did on the table and calling it light reading.


End file.
